A Curable Romantic

by Joseph Skibell

  “Ita?” I cried, holding on to her lifeless body. “Fraŭlino?”

  I had no idea what to do. I couldn’t leave her here, nor could I, even at this late hour, carry her through the hotel to her room, the number of which I didn’t even know. I gathered her in my arms and, holding the candle away from her, stumbled across the dance floor to the ballroom’s door. Peering out, I saw that the passageway was empty. I dashed across it and barged into the woman’s powder room, where I left the fraŭlino lying on one of its fainting couches.

  CHAPTER 11

  Despite everything, fraŭlino Loë and I were married in Geneva on the second day of la Dua Universala Kongreso. Dr. Zamenhof’s opening address once again inspired me to throw caution to the wind and to marry on Switzerland’s neutral soil. Somehow the sight of this tiny, myopic Jew, thundering out his polemic with all the fire of an ancient prophet, stirred in me a corresponding fire. Dr. Zamenhof was no longer the meek little fellow he’d been a year before, capitulating to an army of French intellectuals. He’d endured a year of calumny from the critics of Hilelismo, and it had toughened him up. (Perhaps because he’d signed the work pseudonymously, as “Homo Sum,” his critics felt free to fall upon him like a pack of hungry dogs.) Catholic priests from eastern Europe ridiculed Homo Sum for his theological naïveté, meanwhile accusing him of betraying Christ their Lord. The response from the godless West was no better, and perhaps no critic was as vile as the Marquis de Beaufront. Dr. Javal had warned Dr. Zamenhof that France would never be receptive to these sorts of ideas, and the marquis picked up the flag of mockery and marshaled himself beneath its garish colors.

  Dr. Zamenhof had hoped to introduce Hilelismo or Homaranismo, as he now called it (dejudaicizing its name, I suspect, in an attempt to conceal its origins), to a broader audience in Geneva, but the polemic against it had grown so bitter that Dr. Javal advised him against coming to the congress altogether, where a showdown with the marquis couldn’t be avoided. That old military strategist General Sébert insisted, on the other hand, that Dr. Zamenhof had to be there, lest his absence deal a devastating blow to all that we’d managed to achieve so far.

  Sick over the fracas and simply sick, Dr. Zamenhof retreated to the spa at Bad Reinerz to take the cure, and it was there that General Sébert surprised him with a visit and convinced him to attend the congress, though both men agreed, over sulfurous glasses of Mineralwasser, that the time for Hillelism or Homaranismo (Sébert: “Or whatever name you wish to call what is in fact Heaven on Earth”) had not yet arrived.

  “Kara Generalo,” Dr. Zamenhof took General Sébert’s hand, “may calm heads like yours always prevail.”

  “No more of this utopian skylarking, then?”

  “Not for the immediate future,” Dr. Zamenhof agreed.

  “Yes,” General Sébert sighed, settling back into his chair and eying a bevy of beautiful tubercular girls, “the immediate future, like all of the past, will have to do without universal brotherhood, I’m afraid.”

  DR. ZAMENHOF, HOWEVER, was afraid of no such thing. Though Hilelismo and its beardless twin, Homaranismo, may have been rejected, he knew who he was, and on the opening night of the congress, he took advantage of the power conferred upon him not only by his superior position in our movement — he was, after all, the creator of Esperanto! — but by the moment itself to expound upon la interna ideo, the inner idea.

  After thanking the gracious land of Switzerland and its king for a warm welcome, Dr. Zamenhof apologized to the crowd assembled at his feet for his inability to deliver a dry and meaningless speech. “Not only do I detest such speeches, but given everything that is now occurring in my native land, where millions of people are fighting for their most elemental rights, such a passionless speech would be a sin!”

  General Sébert, on the dais, stiffened; Professor Cart sighed.

  Undeterred, Dr. Zamenhof reminded us that, of course, according to the Boulogne Declaration, politics did not belong at these gatherings. “However” — he pounded his lectern — “the hatred between peoples that is the fundamental cause of all political strife is something that cannot not touch us as Esperantists either!”

  He spoke in a calmer voice: “You know, we’re not as naïve as people think. We don’t believe that a universal language will turn men into angels. We know very well that evil men will remain evil. But as the world grows darker and men grow crueler, we must clarify for ourselves the inner idea of Esperantism.”

  The Boulogne Declaration, unanimously accepted at the First Universal Congress, defined an Esperantist as any person who uses Esperanto.

  “An Esperantist is therefore not only a person who dreams of unifying mankind through Esperanto but even one who uses Esperanto for practical reasons, or for economic benefit, or only for amusement, or even, God forbid, for ignoble and misanthropic purposes.”

  At these words, Dr. Zamenhof threw a searing look at the marquis. He was sitting close to the front and not far from me. In response, the marquis stood and tossed the crook of his elegant cane over his arm and applauded wildly.

  “No one is compelled to believe in the inner idea,” Dr. Zamenhof counseled us reassuringly. “But the Boulogne Declaration, which made such a belief a private matter, did not make it an impermissible one! And neither does anyone have the right to demand that each Esperantist see in Esperanto only a practical concern! Should we rip from our hearts the part of Esperanto that is the most important and the most holy?

  “Oh, no, no, never!”

  His “Ho, ne, ne, neniam!” rang throughout the brightly lit auditorium like a fire alarm.

  “With this Esperanto,” he spit out the words, “serving only the goals of practicality and commerce, we have nothing in common!” He roared: “Better we should tear to pieces and burn everything we’ve written on behalf of Esperanto, better we should rip the green star from our breasts!”

  I imagined that by now the marquis would at least be blushing. But no, his teeth sparkled in a wide, open, and admiring smile, and one could even detect a tear glittering behind his pince-nez.

  “The time will someday come,” Dr. Zamenhof continued, holding the crowd enthralled, despite his shrill tenor, “when Esperanto, having become the possession of all mankind, will lose its inner idea; when it will be merely a language, and one will no longer fight battles for it. But now, we know what inspires our battles. Not practical use, no, but only the holy idea of brotherhood and justice between peoples!”

  Then, like one of the ancient prophets he so reminded me of, Dr. Zamenhof threw down the gauntlet, demanding that those of us listening to him declare ourselves either for or against the inner idea.

  “Why did they even join with us, these people who want Esperanto only as a language? Didn’t they fear that the world would blame them for conspiring in the greatest of crimes, namely the desire to work little by little for the unification of mankind?”

  The glowering expression disappeared from his face and he grinned at us, as though we were children who, after a stern talking-to, had been forgiven by our father. “You remember how happy we were in Boulogne, at the ‘unforgettable congress,’ and you all know very well what it was that inspired us: the inner idea. Let the world mock us or call us utopianists. Let us be fiery about the name utopianist! Let each of our new congresses strengthen in us the love of the inner idea, and little by little, our annual congresses will finally become a constant festival of human love and brotherhood.”

  Dr. Zamenhof stopped abruptly. We waited for him to continue, but instead he bowed, and for a moment after, there was nothing but silence. Then a great cry filled the hall; it sounded like the shelves in a crystal shop collapsing. The French intellectuals, lined up on the dais, smiled sheepishly, clapping their hands in postures that were equal parts reluctance, irony, and distress.

  A voluble and unpredictable fellow, the Marquis de Beaufront suddenly leapt upon the stage, the split tails of his tuxedo jacket flapping behind him like the feathers of some ungainly bird.
“Majstro!” he called out, and then to the auditorium: “Sinjorinoj kaj sinjoroj!” He waved his hands about, attempting to silence the crowd.

  A prisoner to his own sense of politeness, Dr. Zamenhof stood frozen on the spot, uncertain what was coming next and clearly not knowing what to do. The audience retook its seats and settled down, expecting the marquis no doubt to make an announcement of some sort. Perhaps he would bestow an honor upon the Majstro or address a cautionary word or two about fire exits or lost personal items. Instead, shouting to the upper balconies, he announced that he had been, that very afternoon, to visit Ernest Naville, the ninety-year-old philosopher who was serving as the honorary president of our congress. Too frail to attend, Naville had nevertheless publicly endorsed the teaching of Esperanto in all Swiss schools.

  “He repeated to me his interest in our great enterprise,” the marquis burbled, “as well as his admiration for the work of our Majstro and his sympathy with us all. Finally, asking me to pass along his greetings to the congress, he said, as I was about to leave him, ‘Let us kiss each other as brothers!’ and he kissed me twice. Twice, yes!” The marquis cast an affectionate and sentimental look at Dr. Zamenhof. “As I cannot keep that twofold kiss to myself, I beg our dear Majstro to allow me to pass it on to him, and through him, to Esperantists everywhere!”

  Like a pugilist, the marquis pulled Dr. Zamenhof to him with his long arms. Holding him captive against his chest, he placed a lingering kiss upon his cheek. Dr. Zamenhof seemed to go limp, his arms slack at his side. Finally the marquis released him, and he remained where he was, paralyzed, while the marquis sank into Dr. Zamenhof’s chair on the dais, his hand over his heart, apparently overcome with the emotion of it all.

  Fraŭlino Loë and I looked at each other through the unshatterable silence that filled the auditorium. Biting her lip and rounding her shoulders, she stifled a derisive laugh. I was about to essay a derogatory comment of my own, hoping to force the laughter from her throat — the pearling gaiety of her amusement always lightened my heart — when an uproar shook the room, causing me to jump: “Vivu Zamenhof! Vivu de Beaufront!” people on all sides of us were shouting.

  Though I was pleased to take the marquis’ exuberant gesture as a sign that he’d repented from his derisive attacks upon Hilelismo, not everyone was equally convinced. Carlo Bourlet, leaning into me, whispered a single bitter word: “Judas!”

  (A curious note: When asked later about the event, Ernest Naville expressed confusion. “A kiss?” he wondered in astonishment. “I never kissed anyone, certainly not that man and certainly not twice. But why do you ask?”)

  HANS BERNFELD HAPPENED to be in Lausanne on business during the congress. Over the years, his daughter had tried in vain to interest him in Esperanto, but possessing a dozen languages already, he felt no need for eine Traum-Sprache, a dream language, as he called it. “As in a dream, everything makes sense, until you awaken and discover that all you’ve been speaking is gibberish.” And so, though he was no more than fifty kilometers away, he’d declined to join us.

  He avoided me on principle, anyway.

  Moments before fraŭlino Bernfeld and I would legally divorce a few years later, sitting across from each other in Rabbi Chajes’s office at the Stadttempl on Seitenstettengasse, preparatory to my signing, upon her insistence, a rabbinic degree of divorce, she revealed to me the truth about our wedding in Geneva. The events leading up to it had not proceeded as I’d imagined. As I recalled the moment, the two of us were once again elated by Dr. Zamenhof’s speech, and in the heightened flush, our hearts open and unfearful about the future of mankind and of ourselves, I’d taken her by the hand and suggested, or rather demanded, that we wait no longer but immediately find “somewhere in the free republic of Switzerland!” a rabbi who might marry us that very night. Though Loë made some demurrals — there was the question of her father and her family and the large circle of her acquaintances — she acceded to my wishes.

  “Good!” I shouted my joy to the ceilings of Victoria Hall. “Let us find this rabbi then and summon him immediately!”

  Fraŭlino Loë, however, convinced me that tomorrow would be early enough, as it would give her sufficient time to telegraph her father in order to urge him to attend.

  In reality, everything had been prepared in advance. Unbeknownst to me, Loë had already contacted a Rabbi Himmelglocke, who had already procured two witnesses and hired a local handyman to erect a wedding canopy in the sanctuary of the little pink synagogue two blocks from Victoria Hall. The alacrity with which Herr Bernfeld answered his daughter’s telegram raised no alarums of suspicion in my mind either, though his reply to her summons was waiting for her at breakfast the following day.

  He’d written to express his displeasure at his daughter’s rashness, while promising to arrive as quickly as possible. His telegram concluded: “DO NOT GO THROUGH WITH ANYTHING UNTIL WE HAVE SPOKEN!”

  In this whirlwind of preparations — the good rabbi balked at my request that he conduct the ceremony in Esperanto, and Dr. Zamenhof, no keeper of Sabbaths, was not to be permitted, as we’d wished, to sign the wedding contract — it never occurred to me how astonishing it was that, with a single day’s notice, the fraŭlino had found in the foreign shops of Geneva a perfectly tailored wedding dress (in which, parenthetically, she looked magnificent). Her hair, freed from its usual binding, was a mass of unruly curls. In addition, she wore long sheer gloves of patterned lace and, beneath her wide skirts, though neither I nor anyone else could see them, matching stockings that immodestly concealed the soft intoxicating flesh of her legs.

  We’d scheduled the ceremony for four o’clock, hoping to give her father time to arrive. When half an hour had passed and Herr Bernfeld was still not present, Rabbi Himmelglocke insisted we begin. He had other duties to attend to, as did the witnesses, and our guests, congress participants all, needed to prepare for the evening’s festivities. As we were instructed to wear them beneath our top hats, yarmulkes were found for me, for Dr. Zamenhof, and for the three other Jewish Esperantists whom we’d asked to hold up the chupah with him. These included Drs. Javal and Ilia Ostrovski, physician to the recently deceased writer Anton Chekhov and the designer of the Esperanto flag. A prayer shawl was procured for me as well. Those who’d come to celebrate were divided, first by the rabbi and then by themselves, into three groups: men on one side of the sanctuary, women on the other, French intellectuals in the back, where they stood, keeping a cool distance from the exotic proceedings.

  The hall was lit by candlelight. Dr. Zamenhof’s eyes were shining. A violinist played. My thoughts, as ever, were elsewhere: How many times have I stood beneath a wedding canopy? I wondered. And will this really be the last? (I couldn’t possibly have known then that this, the first marriage of my own contrivance — if one didn’t count fraŭlino Loë’s clandestine hand in the affair — would be only the third among, at the most recent counting, seven.) Or will Ita hound me beyond her grave to my own? There seemed little likelihood of that, and I congratulated myself on taking a stand against her. I had made my choice: rather than waiting forever for Ita in a Szibotya of my own making, I’d entered the braver newer world of our virgin century with fraŭlino Loë, meanwhile trading our old sad dzjargon for the glories of la lingvo universala, and my father’s linguistic idiocies for Dr. Zamenhof’s visionary schemes.

  When fraŭlino Loë appeared in the sanctuary, holding a bouquet of daisies dyed Esperanto green, I knew I’d made the correct choice. She was radiant, a study in white. She was, in fact, so beautiful I could barely look at her and instead lowered my gaze to her small feet, shod in white leather and peeking out from beneath the great, frothy bell of her wedding gown. With each of her tiny steps down the center aisle, the ensemble made a charming rustling sound. As she encircled me the seven requisite times, I caught a whiff of her perfume — cinnamon, honey, clove — and I nearly swooned. I mumbled a prayer of thanks and swore to whatever deity there was to raise our children in an Esperantan home,
so that, as a family, we might lead the way to international brotherhood and peace.

  Fraŭlino Loë revolved around me with such an hypnotic gait that I did, in fact, become hypnotized. Or at least partially so. I could feel myself standing outside the moment, gazing down upon it, as it were, from inside the synagogue’s domed ceiling. Removed from the proceedings in this way, I watched everything with a clarity that was astonishing to me. While Rabbi Himmelglocke was reading the wedding contract in Aramaic, in response to the sound of a door opening, fraŭlino Loë turned her head. Daylight from the front door spilled in through the second door, momentarily flooding the room. Loë nodded nearly imperceptibly, pleased it seemed, and I looked in that direction as two figures entered the sanctuary: Loë’s father, the great Hans Bernfeld, in his long black coat and his luxuriant black beard and, behind him, his amanuensis Herr Goldberg. The little scrollwork of Herr Bernfeld’s flaring nostrils was as articulated as the curls in a violin head as he literally turned up his nose at the proceedings before him.

  Loë’s face darkened in response.

  In the strange disembodied state I was inhabiting, I knew exactly what he was seeing: me, a silly man, completely beneath his daughter in status, in fortune, in intellect. He looked at our beloved Majstro and saw him for the humbug that he was: a Don Quixote in a ridiculous top hat, a child pretending to be a man, daydreaming of his useless utopias, making speeches all over the world in an incomprehensible idioglossia. In an age more humane than ours, he would have been put down like a dog. Herr Bernfeld next glanced at Klara, crying into her kerchief. What was she but a simpering little cow, an addlepated Jewess, following her deranged husband, Sancho Panza–like, from kingdom to kingdom as he made a bigger and bigger ass of himself, squandering in the meantime her valuable dowry, which could have been invested towards excellent profit, and destroying their children’s names as well as their fortunes?